


Stitches

by ssstrychnine



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 12:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2546741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/ssstrychnine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carol waits for a sign.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stitches

When they are living at the farm Maggie tells Carol she needs to wait for a sign. A line in the sand or a break in the line, some kind of gesture that tells her _yes_. Carol isn't sure about that but she knows she’s wanted to hear that word from Daryl’s lips for a lot longer than Maggie has teased her about it. It itches at her skin, prickling her with a need to feel him warm against her, and it’s impossible to ignore.

The farm falls, because everything falls, Carol has known this since the first time Ed hit her. She hadn't wanted it to happen, of course, she had fought it with everything she had, but it still falls, and Carol isn't surprised. It does surprise her the lengths she goes to to protect it. A lot about her is surprising now, even if the death and destruction stay the same.

Carol kills children and Carol tears buildings down. Carol gets back to her new family and Daryl hugs her so tight she thinks she’ll feel it in her bones for the rest of her life.

“That might be a sign,” Maggie tells her quietly, as they work away from Terminus through the forest.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Carol tells Maggie primly, and the younger girl laughs.

If she’s being completely honest, if she’s being, as Sophia used to say, cross her heart and hope to die honest, never tell another lie honest, she’s just not sure what to _do_ now. Daryl had hugged her, sure (Daryl had bowed his head against her chest, sure, Daryl had grabbed her like a drowning man taking a breath, _sure_ ), but he’d done nothing else like it before and Carol hadn't touched a man other than her (poor, dead, Hell sent) husband in almost twenty years. So she does nothing. They walk through Georgia together and their shoulders touch and she smiles at him, when she can stop thinking about dead children for a moment, and she waits for her sign.

Daryl sits next to her in the church and something about that makes her want to run. She is worse than these people she loves. She has done terrible things for these people she _loves_. She loves them with everything in her and she feels like she cannot be around them for another minute. She doesn't deserve them. Daryl sits next to her and his fingers trip all along the string of his crossbow and he chews at his lip and she knows she definitely doesn't deserve _him_ , no matter what Maggie says about signs.

Later, everything has fallen again, and been rebuilt again, and fallen, and fallen. Carol is with them still, and that surprises her. She thought she would have crawled out of her own skin a long time ago and left them. These people she loves. She had tried, several times, to leave without them noticing, to make them stop caring, but every time it had been Daryl who pulled her back. He’d always ask her what she was doing and she’d never have an answer.

“I’m not lettin’ you leave without a reason,” he’d tell her, and she’d go back with him. But it’s not a sign.

He puts his bedroll next to hers, and sometimes when she wakes up in the middle of the night, twitching with nightmares, he’s turned toward her, his forehead creased with dreams of his own, but it’s not a sign.

They’re on a run and she thinks it’s him touching her, thinks a hand at her back, a short, sharp movement against the cloth of her thin shirt, is the sign she’s been waiting for. But then she hears the groan and feels the fingers tighten and she shoots forward, not fast enough to save the back of her shirt, the fabric giving way in a moment to the walkers’s grasping fingers. She cuts her knife down into it’s head and it crumples like dry leaves and her shirt falls open at the back, scraps of fabric fluttering like a flag against her skin.

“You scratched?” she hears Daryl ask behind her and she spins to face him, thinking only about her bare skin and her threadbare bra, somehow wildly inappropriate despite her _designs_ on him.

“No. But my shirt’s not gonna live to tell the tale,” she mutters.

He stares at her, his face unreadable, the only sign that he’s distressed the telltale way he chews at his lip when he doesn't quite know how to express himself. She smiles at him, trying to put him at ease, but he looks away, shrugs his pack off, dumping it to the floor unceremoniously, and starts to unbutton his shirt. Carol freezes, her hands flutter at her sides, caught between wanting to help him out and wanting to button it right back up for him. Daryl had been peculiarly modest about baring skin, his habitually torn off sleeves the one exception.

“Um,” she says. “That’s not-”

“Shut up,” he mumbles, the words blurring together, his eyes firmly on his fingers as they travel down the front of his shirt.

When it’s unbuttoned all the way, he shrugs it off, and Carol can’t help the gasp that slips from her mouth. He is a mass of scars and dirt and blood, and they’re old scars too, not fresh from everything they've been through, though the mark from the arrow through his side shows the brightest. These are the sorts of marks Carol recognises instantly and she wonders what he saw carved into her when she had her back to him. Maybe she’s wearing more than the scars Ed gave her, maybe Lizzie and Mika’s names are scratched into her skin.

With his shirt off Daryl seems smaller, he hunches in over himself, his shoulders slump and his hands curl into fists and his head ducks low. He holds his shirt out to her without looking up.

“It don’t smell the best,” he says to the ground.

“Daryl,” she says, but she doesn't quite know how to finish that thought and she takes the shirt from him instead, deliberately letting her fingers brush his in what she hopes is a comforting gesture. She could not refuse this gift, not now that she can see how much it’s costing him. She turns her back to him, tugs off the remaining scraps of her ruined shirt, and pulls his on in place, her fingers brisk in buttoning up the front.

“I just gotta wear a scowl to match, huh?” she asks as she turns back to him, drawing her mouth down in an exaggerated frown. She’s rewarded by a twitch of his lips, not quite a smile, but then it never really is with him. She takes what she can get.

They head back despite not having found anything, an unspoken agreement, and Carol walks close to him, lets her bare arms brush his, and he doesn't pull away. He disappears as soon as they’re back, quick as anything and dressed in a fresh shirt before anyone knows they've arrived.

“Where’d you get the shirt, Carol?” Maggie asks her later, eyes narrowed and a little bit _too_ knowing. Carol hadn't changed. Hadn't really wanted to, if she’s being honest, had liked the smell of him against her skin, even unclean as the shirt is, as _he_ is. It makes her feel comfortable in a way she hasn't been able to in a long time. It makes her feel like she can be quite and still, makes her feel like she can stay.

“It’s Daryl’s,” Carol admits. “Mine got torn by a walker.”

“And he gave you _his_?” her teeth flash in the darkness, a wicked smile. “That’s _it_.”

“That’s what?” Carol asks, amused.

“The _sign_ ,” Maggie declares, satisfied. Carol laughs, leans back, her hands behind her head, looks out into the dark toward where Daryl is on watch. Out of earshot, she hopes, and her smile widens.

When he swaps with Rick, he comes back to his space next to her, is so silent she almost doesn't hear him. But she does, he’s a brush of wind hear her, a darker patch of night. He settles on his back, tugs a blanket over himself. She rolls over face him and reaches out a hand, catches his forearm with her palm, a clumsy gesture that startles a sound from him, a gasp that he smothers quickly. She runs her hand down his arm until she has his fingers in hers and he _let’s_ her, doesn't make a sound, barely even moves. Hesitantly she tangles her fingers in his and he lets her. She shifts a little closer.

“Thank you for the shirt,” she whispers, so close to his shoulder she knows he can feel the warmth of her breath. He huffs out a reply, no words, just a noise of nervous acknowledgement. “I’ll stay,” she adds and his hand tightens on hers and they fall asleep there, with their hands entwined and her nose brushing his bare shoulder.

Carol doesn't think it’s different afterwards, not really, it’s just _louder_. She wears his shirt until washing day and he doesn't ask for it back.

“Looks better on you,” he tells her when she finally does try to return it and she glows with pleasure.

“I should be torn out of my clothes more often,” she says, grinning, pushing him just a little.

“Yeah,” he replies, actually meeting her eyes, bold and bright, more than a sign, a shining, brilliant, _beacon_. “You should.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the nine lives archive October challenge which was 'secrets and signs'. Thank you for reading!


End file.
